Interactive plants form internal communication networks

According to Mulder, interactive art is "when two systems are linked together and through that linkage change each other." This connection of systems usually require a medium, a human and a receiver of the information transmitted (living or non-living). This anthropomorphic ideology reveals an ignorance towards the specificity of interaction, furthermore that "people are as intelligent as they make their environment... [people] are their environments as much as they are themselves." This human-centric built environment or 'the self' often prevails over a large connection of communication and interactivity: the natural world.

Researcher Josef Stuefer of the Radbound University Nijmegen discovered that particular herbal plants naturally form interior networks in order to communicate information. This interactive experience relies not on our (human) existence but rather that of networked plants connecting through complex runners which warn each other of various intrusive enemies. Therefore, "Once warned, the intact plants strengthen their chemical and mechanical resistance so that they are less attractive for advancing caterpillars." These chemical and mechanical defense systems are the medium or linkage between the communication within the network, allowing these biological changes to manipulate and eventually change the physicality of the plant. According to Mulder, this system of interaction would be a cold media experience, in that this transformation of information (interactivity) takes place within a finite, molecular level of viewing. This mediated experience of unmeasurable, invisible transfered data from plant to plant requires a certain level of scientific conceptuality within the research.

This representation of interaction beyond the generalized human to "something" contact can reveal conceptual reflections on our social relationships. In that, our observational knowledge gathered from nature has and continues to reveal implications and complications of human interaction. This cold or perhaps even non-experience reflects similar relations to our digital relationships through the explosion of online social networking. This systems of communication via runners mirror our use of hardware, software and servers on the internet. The plant's individual connections serves as a defense for a larger communal "good". I personally view the internet as a created global space to diversify and extend knowledge through a system of interconnecting media. Furthermore, our built environment (or the 'self') could be viewed as a re-mediation of the natural world, in that our perception of anything within our observed, known space was directly/indirectly influenced by a larger connection or simply put, nature.

Source:
http://www.nwo.nl/nwohome.nsf/pages/NWOA_76QJ5P_Eng

Representational image:

Mashup: John Klima's "Jack & Jill" vs. Dodge Ball

Game-based play engages a range of physical, social interaction to an defined digital user-computer relationship. These games often enable users to "purge our emotions and then allow us to return, unchanged, to an unchanged society." These relationships between the body, the game and the defined languages/rules allow for an open and undefined sensory experience.

Within John Klima's V.B.A. based game "Jack & Jill", he stereotypes socially defined gender roles in the form of if-then statements, taking on a binary form of zeros and ones rather than our cultural meaning of male and female. His initial code indicates that the outcome of Jack and Jill's location are dependent on the leader and ending in a result of either Feminist or Chauvinist. Although, his final code uses three variable outcomes (indecisive, reluctant, willing) as a commentary on social norms of gender and their relationship to these characteristics. With three variables, Klima demonstrates programming code's influence on their behavior and the possibility of miss-mashed emotional outcomes. The male and female take on a newly defined role as interchangeable and inconsequential of their social meaning, now defined strictly through code. Therefore, these if-then statements control meaning and emotion of Jack and Jill rather than any rational or "realistic" envision of their actual role in our built culture.

Similarly, the game of dodge ball reacts to determined social norms placed on gender, age and physical strength. When beginning the dodge ball, there is a pause before everyone involved is able to run to the center, retrieve a ball and begin throwing them at their opponent (enemy). This game can been seen as a binaural experience, your team versus opposing team. Although within this game, your individual input determines your future as a winner or loser and the language of this game becomes your physical input and output (as a team and individual). The roles within the game are interchangeable, although your physical speed, stamina and strength determine your length of play, rather than executions of if-then statements. Like Jack and Jill's outcome as a social commentary, the player's conclusion to dodge ball reflect a more direct relationship. If the user is hit first, you are seen as weak physically or mentally and exit the game immediately. Likewise, the last players or team standing is portrayed as the 'winner', void of physical or social punishment. The user's relationship to the dodge ball game becomes an if-then statement, in that the outcome is based on a series of decisions made by the individual, or in Jack and Jill's case, the computer. Although in dodge ball the individual may feel more in 'control' of their condition, your physical body becomes the medium of language repeating a series of do loops until the end of the game. Therefore, regardless of medium, outcome and conclusions are based on series of events, often interchangeable and defined by the user's interaction with the game-base play.

Fantasy Game - Counter ^3 Strike

So, the new Counter ^3 Strike is out. It takes place in what was once the state of Palestine, but has been been slowly deleted for the past 30 years. The game starts with shooting and grenade launching practice, guided by your taste and smell of the environment. I know, so unbelievable! When choosing your weapon, your are able to lick the material and smell the use of modern bullets or old gun powder. This leads you to your second choice, your station. Your choices are limited to: Israel, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. You cannot see these places, but you sure can smell the local cooking and lifestyle (licking may not help much in this option). Now that you have chosen your conditions, it's onto the battlefield. The mission, of course, kill your enemy. Once you have killed a member of the opposing nation, you must claim the body by smelling their newly-dead flesh. Similarly, when you become injured in combat, you must lick your bloody wounds to update your health status. They are so realistic, for good and bad! When the missions are completed, you get a home cooked meal to 'sense' (smell and taste) from the local restaurant (given you didn't kill the cook). The meal is good and off to the next mission. What lies ahead? Perhaps a falafel, dead Israeli soldier or Hanukkah treat! Enjoy the taste and smells!

History of Sound Recording and Playback

History:
Sound recording began in the mid 19th Century France, when Leon Scott invented his phonoautograph. Influenced by the rise of mechanical technology, he developed a hand operated horn which trapped sound, sending a vibration to a brush that would inscribe the wave onto a flat material. His phonoautograph was unable to be played back, rather creating a visual image of the captured sound. Later in 1877, Thomas Edison designed his phonograph. It worked similar to Scott's machine, although the phonograph wrote the wave onto a rotating cylinder which allowed for sound playback with the use of a needle and amplification. Sooner after in 1887, Emile Berliner mastered recording sound and playback with his invention of the gramophone. The gramophone cut a spiral grove into the surface of a rotating disk with a needle, and "its velocity changes in a pattern that is analogous to the original audio sine wave form." After, the wave is reconstructed by the playback device, be it an acoustical horn or any amplifier. Until the 1950's, audio signals were mechanically encoded directly onto the medium. From 1950 to the mid 1970's magnetic sound recording began to be explored by audio engineers and recording companies. Then in 1974, physicists Carl Haber and Vitaliy Fadeyeu developed digital sound recording. Utalizing their knowledge of reconstructive beam particle collisions, they optically scanned surfaces of a disk or cylinder and processed the resulting data digitally, avoiding all physical contact with the medium. They reconstructed the recordings in digital as 44.1 kHz, 16-bit WAV files, which today remain as the model for all qualitative sound recording.

Sound as a technology:
Sound, as a medium, is physical. It occupies space and as an object can be easily replicated and transported both analogy and digitally without loosing intrinsic value. Although once the digital movement of sound recording became the standard of capturing it, quality was easier to control due to the advancement of computer software and hardware. Sound recording and playback has taken on an important role in the social and political retrospective. As a tool, sound recording has launched cultural awareness (through music) as well as creating social genres (such as the 'iPod generation'). Due to digital sound recording, mp3s and their players have created mobile sonic escapes from reality, allowing the user to guide and label their daily lifestyle around recorded playlists.

Environment:
The production of contemporary sound recording and playback has entered a realm of a user-defined medium. Although high-end sound recording equipment remains in the hands of the wealthy, anyone is able to become a producer and receiver of sound. Sound remains autonomous, in that our existence as human beings control, alter and further its use as a technology and medium of artistic use. Furthermore, regardless of any hierarchy of sound recording and playback, "sound is instrinsically and unignorably relational: it emanates, propagates, communicates, vibrates, and agitates."

Works Cited:
Labelle, Brandon. Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art. New York: Continuum International, 2006. 1-316.

Public, General. "History of Sound Recording." Wikipedia. .

Teachout, Terry. "Why Listening Will Never Be the Same." Commentary Sept. 2002: 57-60. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Wilkinson, Scott. "In the Grove." Primedia Magazine Nov. 2004: 26+. Academic Search. EBSCO. University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Mashup: Arjen Mulder theory -vs- jodi.org

"In a trance, the body becomes a medium. An autonomous play with signs, images, impulses, and vibration." - Arjen Mulder from Understanding Media Theory

Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesman's jodi.org formed a user-unfriendly virtual art piece based on a mature command code called window.open(). Within the website, the operation introduces one pop-up window on the command of the user visiting the site. Thereafter, a looping process of infinite duration forces windows to proceed and eventually 'take over' the user's monitor until a force quit or computer restart occurs (from the user).

The viewers/users of jodi.org are in a state of hypermediation or as Mulder claims, "in a direct connection to a medium." Users of the Internet have been subdued into a digital trance, aware of it's 'proper' use and function as a navigational and informational tool. Therefore, the Internet as a media becomes transparent and begins to "satisfies a deep desire in media users: the desire not to have to use media." jodi.org breaks this transparency, allowing the user to recognize the Internet as a process of order/disorder, power/powerless, software/hardware, and zero/one. Resulting in exposing and subjecting the user's relationship to human-computer interaction as active, not passive and that the computer (as a medium) will not perpetually exist as an "obedient machine."

Old Media

Image of Old Media

This stop sign is a form of old media. Working off the definition that "media simply provides means of reaching others", public signage has been a vehicle of visual communication for centuries. Early forms of signage includes: a cross representing a physical figure of the spirit of Jesus Christ, locational/directional information or marking territories of civilizations. Although, public signs have been used as media communication to develop more than information alone. Signs have socially developed into streams of messages which to guide thought, knowledge and human mediation. Although the stop sign is a form of media, the shape, language and symbols attached to the it become the medium. Guiding the user to react to the media both physically and mentally. This is apparent within modern advertising. Industry and corporations abuse this media to gain revenue and popularity through product placement and persistent marketing schemes. Throughout the public and private domain, signage is an indulgence of communication.